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Pineapple Punch
To make a fascinating violet-tinted punch of delicate flavor, put one cup of grated pineapple with one pint of water, cook for fifteen minutes. Strain through cheesecloth, pressing out all the juice.
Add one pint of water and two cups of sugar, which have been boiled ten minutes, half a cup of freshly made tea, the juice of three oranges and three lemons, one cup of grape juice and two and one-half quarts of water. Put in a punch bowl with a large lump of ice. Serve perfectly chilled in sherbet glasses.- Anne Warner.
A cooked-fruit punch of the sort made in quantity for receptions and card parties. It is simple work, but the proportions matter more than the method: this makes close to a gallon, and the sweetness lands where you set it.
- YieldAdding it up — a pint of pineapple water, a pint of syrup, two and a half quarts of water, plus the sugar, juices and grape juice — gives something over 4 quarts. That is 16 to 20 servings in small punch cups or the sherbet glasses called for.
- The syrup is a separate stepThe pint of water and two cups of sugar are boiled ten minutes on their own, then added. Do not stir raw sugar into the cold punch; the ten-minute boil is what gives the finished drink body rather than grittiness.
- Grated pineappleMeant to be scraped from a fresh cut pineapple against a coarse grater. A cup of canned crushed pineapple can stand in; if it is packed in syrup rather than juice, taste before adding the full amount of sugar syrup.
- The teaThe recipe asks only for half a cup of "freshly made tea," which would most likely have meant ordinary black tea. Steep it briefly; a stewed, bitter brew will dominate the whole bowl.
- Where the violet tint comes fromChiefly the cup of grape juice, which at the time would most often have been unfermented Concord. Concord juice still gives the purple cast; a pale white grape juice will not.
- The lump of iceOne large block, not cubes. A single mass melts slowly and keeps the punch cold without watering down a drink that is already heavily diluted. Freeze water in a loaf pan or bowl the day before.
- Adjust at the endCombine everything, chill thoroughly, then taste — you may want more lemon, and the punch is better slightly tart than sweet.
Punch of this kind — fruit juice, sugar syrup, tea and a great deal of water, served cold from a bowl over a block of ice — was a standard nonalcoholic offering at American afternoon entertainments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when temperance sentiment ran strong in middle-class households. The tea is the tell: it is what gave these teetotal punches the astringency that wine or rum supplied elsewhere. Bottled unfermented grape juice, the other distinctive ingredient, had become widely available in the decades after pasteurization made it keep, and it was marketed as a respectable alternative to wine, which is part of why it turns up in so many recipes of the era as much for its color as its taste. The recipe is signed by its contributor, Anne Warner.